


I'll Be Home For Christmas

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:04:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chrestomanci and his apprentice are called away from Christmas dinner for a minor distraction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be Home For Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [itemfinder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/itemfinder/gifts).



> I had a great time writing this, and I was so excited when I got my assignment. Thank you for allowing me the chance to write something with paternal bonding, and something more for this world. It's been years since I've read the books, and this was frankly the last fandom I expected to be able to write for, but it was such a delight. Happy Yuletide!

There’s a beat of silence before Chrestomanci pauses, looks up from the dinner table, and winks out of sight without even a rush of air or a word to indicate that he was there to start with. Cat is used to it, but Tonino still looks alarmed, and he is certain that Janet may never adjust to the constant presence of magic. Neither Julia nor Roger stop arguing over the last of the pudding, and Millie only sighs, and Cat hears her mutter, “Must it really happen on Christmas?” before she looks up at him expectantly, and he swallows a groan, knowing what’s going to happen next.

Sure enough, “Better be on your way, Eric,” she says, and Cat pushes to his feet, even though he’s sore from playing in the snow with the others earlier in the day, and he thinks that he’s fuller than he’s been in years. “He’ll be waiting for you if you don’t hurry. We’ll save you a few crackers for when you come back.”

One of the castle cats trots up to Cat’s chair and sits down, peering expectantly up at him with luminescent green eyes, but Cat only manages to drop a small bit of turkey from the table to him before he grabs a few sausage rolls, bobbing his head to the others and ducking out of the room before Millie can complain about how he’ll be off somewhere with greasy hands. Cat doesn’t think it matters much, anyway, since he’s only wearing trousers and the Christmas sweater she made for him, which is already a few sizes too small, and he hasn’t had the time to magically expand it to fit.

At fifteen, Cat is growing like a weed, and Chrestomanci is talking more seriously about his apprenticeship and his own inevitable retirement. Cat goes with him more often than not, except when he’s in lessons, but that is more often than with Chrestomanci, wherever he goes. Gabriel DeWitt did it to him, Chrestomanci says, and he learned more by doing the work of Chrestomanci than learning about it. Cat typically enjoys going with Chrestomanci, except when it’s very early in the morning or on holidays like these, when he’d rather stay in bed and have a lie in like a slug.

Just before he turns his attention to finding Chrestomanci and following him, Cat stuffs half of one of his sausage rolls into his mouth, chewing quickly and putting only a little effort into transporting himself to where Chrestomanci is doubtlessly waiting for him. He’s still holding the remainder of his roll when he appears outside a sturdy wooden cabin with a steep roof and snow drifts above his head, with more snow whipping around his hair. Suddenly, the inadequately short sweater is even more inadequate, and Cat nearly drops the other two rolls when he grapples for the door handle. There aren’t any footprints around, though he wouldn’t be surprised if it’s snowing hard enough that any Chrestomanci left might already be gone.

The door swings open easier than Cat expected when he finally gets a good grip on it with his greasy hands, sure he can all but hear Millie’s disdain as he staggers inside, feeling as lanky and awkward as he is in his body. Chrestomanci looks over at him, standing between two angry men clutching bottles of a strong-smelling liquor that Cat likens to the vodka he snuck the year before, and spent the whole night vomiting. His stomach turns at the memory, and Chrestomanci’s face bursts into a smile.

“Ah, Cat,” he says brightly, as if he isn’t holding back two men who look like they could squish him with a dirty look with nothing but a confinement spell. “Glad you could come. I think these gentlemen could use a hand, ah, dispelling their disagreements.” Cat slams the door shut behind him as Chrestomanci shifts and looks at him and continues as cheerfully as ever. “I don’t speak a word of Russian, I’m afraid, so it’s really just a good guess on my part.”

Cat swallows the lump in his mouth left over from the sausage roll, and adjusts them so they’re in his right hand and out of the way, in case he needs to cast any spells. “Sorry,” he says, and Chrestomanci takes a hesitant step toward him, which he abandons quickly when the men start shouting in slurred Russian again. Their faces are very red, and the only word that Cat can understand is “Chrestomanci”, again and again, interspersed between other words that he doesn’t even know how to begin to translate into English.

“I suppose that settles how they summoned you,” he mutters and walks toward them slowly, but they jerk in surprise and look at Chrestomanci and Cat as if it’s the first time they’ve seen them there. It slowly begins to occur to Cat that the summoning was likely a mistake, and indeed, both of the men look sheepish when they meet Cat’s eyes, as if they understand what’s happened now that he’s there, too ill-prepared for the snow to be an accidental visitor happening upon their argument.

“I suppose so,” Chrestomanci sighs and adjusts his hair, dropping the confinement spells and retreating toward Cat, who shifts the sausage rolls again, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Gentlemen, I appreciate the call for a visit,” he begins politely, and nods to them curtly, though he also looks dimly irritated by the inconvenience.

They leave very shortly after that, to the repeated apologies, or so Cat assumes, from the men, even as they push a few bottles of the same, pungent alcohol to emphasize their apologies. Cat staggers out into the cold, clinging to one bottle and dropping one of his sausage rolls, which he looks at forlornly. Chrestomanci follows him out, carrying a steaming basket of something Cat recognizes as gingerbread cookies by their smell, which overpowers everything else around them.

“Shall we head back now?” Chrestomanci suggests, and Cat nods, shivering in the cold already from the short amount of time he had to spend there. “Sorry for the inconvenience. Part of the job, you know.” Chrestomanci sounds downright jovial, which contrasts nicely to Cat’s quickly darkening mood as they stomp through the snow for so long that Cat thinks they might even be planning to walk back to Chrestomanci Castle from the middle of this blizzard.

Finally, Chrestomanci clears his throat, and Cat looks up at him in time to catch his words over the sudden howl of wind. “I remember Gabriel DeWitt woke me in the middle of the night to see to some business on the North Pole one Christmas Eve. I think I was just a little older than you are now. There was an enchanter setting up shop there, and he wanted help with his… well, you know about Saint Nicholas. This man fancied the idea of a retirement making toys and sending them to children, just like the story.”

Cat stares in disbelief at Chrestomanci and shifts the weight in his arms, shivering so hard that he’s sure he’s about to drop the whole load into the snow, which began to seep into his socks not so long after he entered the cabin. Now, his feet are wet and cold, and Chrestomanci still looks entirely unperturbed by any of their circumstances. Cat suspects that he’s already cast warming spells over his own clothes and forgotten Cat, or maybe he wants Cat to cast his own spells, but hands are too full for the spells.

Chrestomanci continues, “Anyway, one of his support beams in this winter lodge he built to do this work went out during a heavy snow, not so different than this one, and he needed help restoring it in time to finish the rest of his toys. Gabriel was kind about it, but I recall standing up to my hips in snow and waiting for some kind of deep revelation about the experience to come to me.”

“Did you ever find one?” Cat asks, perhaps more bitterly than he meant it to be. Chrestomanci laughs between gusts of wind, the sound of it being carried off into the night with the next blast of snow. He looks down at Cat with genuine mirth twinkling in his eyes.

“You know, I never did.”

Cat stares into the distance for a moment before he laughs, and shrugs, offering the sausage roll to Chrestomanci, who takes it without hesitation and lifts it in thanks before he takes a bite. “I imagine Millie will feed my dinner to the cats if we don’t hurry.”

“She said she’d save us crackers,” Cat explains, as if that will mitigate his disappointment when they come back and there’s nothing left of the meal.

“Well, I suppose that’s something.” Chrestomanci pauses in the snow and looks at Cat, and Cat stares back, too near to Chrestomanci’s height to feel like the man is towering over him now. Sometimes, Cat thinks how lucky he was when he first came to Chrestomanci Castle, how lucky he was in the years after to have gotten away from Gwendolyn, who he misses sometimes, even though he’s old enough to regret how she treated him. Janet is as much of a sister as Tonino acts like a brother, and she certainly tries hard to be like a sister to him, but Cat is sometimes sensitive to the difference when she looks like she did at the dinner table, astonished at the ever-present magic in the Castle, though she tries to stifle it and look like it doesn’t bother her.

“You’ll be a fine Chrestomanci one day, I think,” Chrestomanci muses and brushes snow off his shoulders, resting the basket of gingerbread on his arm. Cat’s heart sinks at the words, because it makes him feel inadequate, as if the years of his life training under Chrestomanci have been for nothing. Chrestomanci seems to recognize his falling expression, and continues with a smile, “Another ten years or so, and I ought to be ready to retire. It should give you plenty of time to get used to things like this.”

“I don’t know if I ever will,” Cat gritted out through clenched teeth, to keep them from chattering.

“You won’t,” Chrestomanci laughs and before Cat can say anything ill-advised about how hypocritical he is, the blizzard vanishes and they reappear together, dripping with melted snow, in the entrance hall of the Castle. Before Cat can move, to shake off the water or set down the gifted liquor, Chrestomanci waves his hands and Cat’s clothes dry immediately, and his sweater stretches to fit his arms. “Maybe I’ll send you in my place next time,” he suggests brightly, his own suit already dry, and Cat realizes that he’s only teasing him. “Let’s get back to dinner before they throw out our crackers too, shall we?”

Cat sets the liquor on a table in the hall and hurries after him, catching up to him in the hallway outside the formal dining room, where the others are still clinking around and laughing. “Chrestomanci,” he says hurriedly, and Chrestomanci turns to look at him, humming at him and fixing his hair again. “Is there some deep meaning I’m supposed to learn from all of this? I mean, other than how to be Chrestomanci. Are you trying to teach me… I don’t know, patience or something?”

“Good Lord, if I wanted to teach you patience, I’d send you to visit Gabriel DeWitt more often than you do.” Cat shuddered at the thought, but Chrestomanci didn’t even seem to notice. “Sometimes, Cat, I just want to get to know you a little better, in a setting a little less dry than one of our magic lessons. You don’t always have to come, but it’s fun spending some time with you.”

“Oh.”

Chrestomanci winks at him, resting his hand on the door handle. “Why don’t you come to my office later tonight, and we’ll play a game of chess.”

“I’m not very good at chess,” Cat confesses, and Chrestomanci shrugs, pushing the door open and offering him another wink.

“That’s all right,” Chrestomanci says and smiles pleasantly at him. “Neither am I.” Then he holds the door and gestures for Cat to go inside first, where Janet and Tonino are looking up at him guiltily, surrounded in a puff of glittery confetti that tells him that they’ve already pulled his crackers.

“Merry Christmas, Cat,” he says, and bustles past him toward Millie, leaving the door to swing shut behind Cat, who walks inside after him, takes his seat again, and remembers finally to wish the rest of the table a Merry Christmas, this time with a smile to accompany it.


End file.
